For those of you that answered over 50 on the age question, you probably
grew up reading Popular Electronics magazine. (For the U.S. folks anyway.)
In the five year period between 1967 and 1971, Southwest Technical Products
Corp. (SWTPC) published over 50 articles in Popular Electronics written by
Daniel Meyer, Don Lancaster, Louis Garner and others. The idea was to write
a construction article then sell the circuit board and kit of parts. Daniel
E. Meyer started DEMCO in 1964 and incorporated as SWTPC in 1967. The
company lasted until 1986 and had over 100 employees the 1970s. Don
Lancaster was not an employee, he just got royalties.
Around 1975 SWTPC came out with computer and terminal kits. Don Lancaster
was turning out Cookbooks by then (RTL, TTL, CMOS, etc) and started doing
musical projects for PAIA. They parted ways.
I have been collecting old issues of Popular Electronics and Radio
Electronics and scanning a selection of SWTPC projects. This is a history of
kits like FM wireless microphones, reverb adapters, musical instruments,
audio amps, strobe lights, digital clocks, and digital test equipment. Most
of the members of this list have built several of these things over the
years. For example, there are some Nixie tube projects in Feb 1970, Dec 1970
and Feb 1971.
I have almost finished with Popular Electronics and have posted them to my
web site. I will add to the Radio Electronics page next. (Thanks to Jay
West for providing the space.) I am scanning the magazines at 300 dpi and
storing them as tiff files. I downsize them to 150 dpi JPG files for the
web. I have over 1.5 GB of magazine tiff files. I will make them available
on a DVD ROM for those who want them. My whole web site will fit on a
CD-ROM. I will provide details on how to get these in a few weeks. (I am not
looking to make any money on this.)
http://www.swtpc.com/mholley/magazines.htm
I also have a 1971 SWTPC catalog with a list of which Popular Electronics
issue each product came from.
http://www.swtpc.com/mholley/Catalog7/Catalog.htm
Michael Holley
www.swtpc.com/mholley